Scott Speedman and Emily Hampshire aren’t exactly Good Neighbours

“I don’t want to make myself vomit, but I feel like I’m growing as an artist,” says Scott Speedman, who stars alongside Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire in Good Neighbours, a twisted bit of black comedy directed by Montreal’s Jacob Tierney. “Three years ago I wouldn’t have been ready to make this, but I’m getting more confident as an actor, and more willing to try different things.”

Speedman, of course, is best known for his years as the Felicity heartthrob, but the 36-year-old Toronto boy has also shown greater range in the last few years. He starred in Atom Egoyan’s Adoration, and acted opposite Paul Giamatti in Barney’s Version, a film that earned the veteran actor some of the best notices of his career. “It kind of makes me nervous, but I can handle it now,” he says. “It takes a certain amount of going through stuff to learn what you want.”

In Good Neighbours, Speedman plays a grieving voyeur with a secret, a dashing character in a wheelchair who may or may not have something to hide. It’s a part that requires a little more nuance than we may have seen from the actor in his previous roles.

“I got burned-out in L.A., and burned-out on various things that happens to people down there,” says Speedman, who never quite pulled a full-Lindsay Lohan, but does admit to losing some years to a way of life that didn’t always leave him with a clear head for work. “I got rejuvenated with Atom Egoyan’s movie and changed my lifestyle to something more conducive to being a good actor again.”

Good Neighbours is a wicked three-hander, but ultimately the picture belongs to Emily Hampshire, a 30-year-old from Montreal who also worked with much of the same cast and crew in The Trotsky. She says her character, who does some very bad things, was actually liberating to play.

“She gave me the freedom to do and say what I want, while in real life I feel like I have to use social graces,” says Hampshire, who had to walk a fine line with being a likeable enough protagonist, while also willfully enjoying making the body count rise. In particular, there’s one scene in Good Neighbours that’s certain to be difficult on her poor mother’s eyes.

“For the first time in my 15 years of doing this job, I felt really uncomfortable,” says Hampshire of a short scene that involves a prop, a corpse and a whole lot of black garbage bags. “I trust Jacob intrinsically, but I still worried about that scene until his mom saw the movie and was like, ‘That was so funny!’ I just thought: ‘Thank God.’ ”

The film, which was shot in Montreal where most of the people on both sides of the camera live (including Xavier Dolan, the hottest 20-year-old filmmaker in the world, who makes a cameo), pushed the boundaries of both taste and talent for everyone involved. For his part, Speedman’s hoping the picture will further push forward his long overdo comeback.

“I need to reintroduce myself to the studio world — I’m off their lists and I have to get back in their graces,” he says. “I knew I was going to grow into being a better actor. I also knew it would take a little more time.”